


sand red with freedom dreams

by Lobo_Loca



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dark, Galra Keith (Voltron), Gen, Horror, Keith raised by the Galra Empire, Stream of Consciousness, Written for a Horror-themed Zine In Fact, some gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-20
Updated: 2018-09-20
Packaged: 2019-07-14 20:25:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16047920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lobo_Loca/pseuds/Lobo_Loca
Summary: Shiro's offered a chance to escape the Arena. All he has to do is win one last fight.





	sand red with freedom dreams

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written for the Eternal Eclipse Dark Voltron Zine. Given the current state of the zine, I think it's high time I posted this.

The scrape of his cell door opening jerked Shiro awake. He lunged blindly, an arching knife-hand strike aimed roughly at throat height. Three drones crashed to the ground, necks and heads sparking. Shiro sprinted for the newly cleared doorway. Grabbed the edge of the doorway and swung left. Not enough momentum to punch his feet through the waiting drone. Drone unbalanced, blaster knocked aside. Weapon hand through the chest. Rolled. Remains raised as shield against the blasters. Rushed the drones. Hit first line. Abandoned drone shield. Backhanded strike through heads.

As the drones fell away, the corridor unfurled, no more drones, and that was  _ wrong _ ; there was always more drones, at least three lines after his second attempt—

Thought ripped away in a maelstrom of agony before Shiro could make sense of the deviation. He collapsed, dimly aware of his head ricocheting off the floor, consumed with the burning emptiness of his lungs and the white searing blankness of his vision as he convulsed.  Time was meaninglessly; seconds stretched into eternities of bare sensation—hot and cold and numb, twitching and writhing and gasping, grating and deafening—

The overwhelming pain receded as quickly as it had come. Shiro hungrily gasped for air even as his chest protested with stabbing aches as he tried to blink away the black and white patches from his eyes. Hands reached for him. He tried to jerk away, to bring his weapon hand up, to kick out where there were surely legs, but his body wouldn’t move, couldn’t so much as twist, as the hands grabbed him. They turned him on his stomach and something planted a foot between his shoulder blades. A clank, and Shiro managed to shift his head just enough to see the limiter clamped on his weapon arm. Hands wrestled his wrists together, his shoulders forced back and the foot digging in. A clink locked his wrists together, the foot vanished, and a claw-tipped hand pulled him up by his hair.

Shiro’s breathing slowed despite the faint burn in his lungs and the rabbiting of his heart against his ribs, attempts to move aborted in favor of stillness, except for errant twitches Shiro couldn’t control.

Mild to moderate electrocution, Shiro reasoned. Classic subduing technique. One of the drones must not have been downed all the way.

“Such hostility, champion,” a voice rumbled next to his ear. “One might think you do not appreciate Galra hospitality .”

_ Hospitality _ . Shiro pushed down the nausea, breathing through his nose. Not that he imagined there was much food left in his stomach if any, but dehydration killed fast. Very fast if he was getting thrown into the Arena so soon after his last bout.

There was a beat of silence before the voice continued, “Quiet one, aren’t you. The best champions are, I’ve found.”

Shiro flinched.

“Ah, unhappy with your prestige? Arrangements could be made, you know. An opening made in one of the milder labor camps. Two square meals a day. Total access to water. Cots,” the voice enticed. “Of course, the quarters are cramped compared to your current accommodations. But all you have to do is  one little favor for your sponsors.”

“What?” croaked Shiro. He almost startled at the sound of his voice, scratchy like his clothes and worn like his resolve. He wanted to close his eyes, drop his head in shame, but he didn’t dare. Not cuffed. Not with a Galra in his blind spot. Not with someone waiting for a more substantial reaction.

The voice chuckled, the tight grasp on his hair gentling as he was lowered to the floor and shifting to something like a caress, or the patting of a faithful dog. “Oh, don’t fret,” the voice crooned. “It’s nothing you haven’t done a hundred times already.”

Shiro tensed as he felt the Galra behind him draw closer, breath hot against his ear.

“All you need to do, champion, is survive.”

The Galra behind him stepped away, and metal hands closed around his arms.

“Make sure to throw him in one of the fast pods,” they ordered, footsteps trailing off down the other end of the hall as the drones hauled Shiro to his feet.

The drones were all that kept Shiro upright, legs weak and prone to spasms and vision swimming and tilting on and off again. In between one blink and the next they were at the infirmary, one of the druids with the sleek, almost skeletal mask marked with oblong yellow eyes bent over his flesh arm as it fastened restraints.

_ No. Not again. _

“No,” Shiro pleaded. “Not my arm. Please not my arm.”

He tried to lash out. Tried to power his weapon arm and go through the throat. He barely twitched, and the druid didn’t so much as twitched as it jabbed an injector into the crook of his arm. Whatever it was seared his veins from the inside, redoubled the spasm, and turned the headache into a furious chiseling of his skull. Shiro bit his lip to keep from screaming.

The pod closed silently, air pressing down like gravity as it pressurized. Shiro slumped against his restraints, almost relieved. Druids could do lots of things with pods. Amputations wasn’t one of them. And pod healing enforced a sort of sleep trance, which Shiro could use. Cat naps had been working so far, but maybe he’d go into the next bout rested instead of barely functional.

His daydreaming washed away in a haze of agony as the air began vibrating and the burning in his veins turned to boiling, carving paths straight through nerves across every inch of body. Shiro didn’t bother trying to save face; he screamed, tears running down his cheeks to mix with the blood from his lip.  He screamed his throat raw, screamed as the sound faded to but a whisper, screamed with no one to hear.

Next thing Shiro knew, the pod hissed open and a much taller druid strapped a limiter on his weapon arm before unfastening the restraints and locking his hands together with a pair of cuffs. The sudden shift was disorienting, almost as much as the sudden clarity and alertness. The healing pod hadn’t done anything for his soul-deep exhaustion, but the dense fog he’d spent the last few months in had lightened a bit, the edge of dryness from thirst was gone along with the abstract gnawing of never quite enough food.

Shiro remained docile as he changed hands from the druid to a pair of drones, focusing on keeping his breathing even and not dissolving into a panic attack.

He hadn’t been in this good condition since the Kerberos mission. The Arena kept gladiators strong enough to fight each other and put up a decent show against the military commanders and Galra nobility that paid for a chance in the ring, but that was leagues from optimal condition. Optimal condition meant gladiators might get the idea to fight back. To realize they didn’t have to live and die by the whims of the Galra.

Except the gladiators couldn’t, not unless they fought together instead of against each other. Maybe, before, Shiro had had the charisma, the experience, to cobble together a resistance. But here, in the Arena? Where his first acts had been to steal a sword from a guard, scream for blood, and kill the previous champion? Where now he sat upon a throne made from the gladiators he had slaughtered without hesitation? Every gladiator knew what Shiro had done to survive. They knew he’d keep doing what kept him alive.

Every Galra knew too.

And they weren’t above exploiting it.

But if it meant getting out—better conditions,  _ no more killing _ —did it really matter  _ why _ the Galra wanted him to survive now?

The drones led him to the pit’s staging area and held him in line behind the largest gladiator Shiro had ever had the dismay of seeing. Easily three times his size, they were shackled wrists to ankles with a thick muzzle buckled over their protruding snout and a limiter strapped to a metal tail trailing behind them, scaly skin liberally covered in scars. Shiro took a moment to marvel at yet another sentient alien species he wouldn’t have encountered if not for the Galra.

Then he started working out his odds of surviving. Non-zero, Shiro judged, taking in the shiny scars around the tail and how every muted roar was met with a flinch, but not without a high probability of limb loss. He’d seen people cut into pieces and left to bleed out before, seen them partially eaten alive bit by bit to roaring cheers. The ones who managed to survive were given to the druids.

Sometimes they came back, enhanced and thrown into the pit for field testing.

Most of the time they didn’t.

Shiro had survived this long by setting aside morality, should nots and will nots, but to be remade into a druid puppet, the last scraps of his humanity rip away with flesh and consciousness?

He’d slit his own throat first.

There was a warning chime as the shield separating the staging area from the pit began dissolving. The stench of blood, shit, and urine nearly knocked Shiro off his feet. The pit might not have ever been clean, but the Galra had kept it presentable in the past.

Drones unleashed the gladiator, who charged into the pit roaring. Shiro tensed, wary and waiting. The shield snapped back into the place and the drones jerked him forward, to where he could see inside the pit.

Shiro stared. The sand was red. Not every grain, but for every patch of beige there was a patch of rusting crimson. At least six corpses that Shiro could count, varying from nearly intact to gutted with shiny intestines and stomachs and organs with no human equivalent to heads without bodies with skin and flesh sliced open to reveal bone and still dripping blood, sprawled over sand or against the walls of the pit.

Shiro was no stranger to carnage, no stranger to the carnage of the Arena, but  _ this _ …. This was different, never seen before,  _ unknown _ . The Galra didn’t leave bodies between bouts—that gave unsponsored gladiators access to potential weapons. The spectators should’ve been rioting, but if anything, the gleeful bloodthirst seemed to be at an all time high.

It didn’t make sense.  

_ This wasn’t how the Arena worked _ .

Shiro pushed down the panic. He couldn’t afford a battle on two fronts. Not when he was about to walk into the pit blind.

A small figure skidded through blood wet sand, transforming halfway through into a slide and narrowly avoiding bisection by tail, sword clutched in a hand trailing behind the figure’s head. Purply skin said Galra by race, the black hair said only by half or less. Shiro’s gut said gladiator, but, even covered in splattered blood and gore, dented and cracked, the armor was unmistakably tailored to fit.

Gladiators didn’t get personalized armor.

Especially not the mixed bloods the Galra sent to die.

The Galra boy rolled to his feet, sweeping out with his sword to slice clean through the gladiator’s muzzle. The gladiator reeled back, tail lashing side to side as they roared, and the Galra fighter laughed, teeth flashing in a sharp grin, before springing forward, blade leading. He ducked frenzied swipes of claws, driving the sword into the gladiator’s abdomen to the hilt.

A moment of stillness before the stands exploded into deafening cheers; the Galra fighter nimbly retrieved his sword, sidestepped the collapsing corpse; the warning chime of the shield lowering; the cuffs pried off Shiro’s wrists; hands shoved him forward: Shiro was in the pit.

The Galra fighter glanced over, smirk twisting into a snarl, and lunged.

Shiro knocked the sword strike away, barely registering the reverberations as he went for the throat. The Galra fighter dodged. Shiro’s weapon hand struck hard, off center, but it was enough.

Except.

Except the Galra fighter choked. Danced out of range. Coughed. Lifted a hand to touch the throat marred only by a red mark.

A throat that should be gouged. Jugular burned through!  _ DEAD! _

Shiro clenched his weapon hand. Creak of joints. Scrape of metal on metal. No whine of gears. No crackle of energy. Just useless metal fibers, bunching and flexing in metal casing, resistance at the bicep—

The limiter.

The drones hadn’t taken off the limiter.

Sweat prickled at the back of his neck, slithering like ice down his back. Lungs stuttered. Knees locked.

The fighter charged, roaring. Shiro ran.

He darted for the nearest carcass. No weapons. Flattened helm. Splintered remains of cheap armor. Shiro threw the flattened helm at the fighter. The fighter dodged, turned to watch it. Shiro threw the armor splinters, darting for the next carcass. The fighter turned back, smirking. Caught a face-full of shrapnel and  _ screamed _ .

The audience clapped, shrieked gleefully.

Shiro checked the next gladiator carcass. No weapons. Armor in pieces too sharp for bare flesh hands. Sternum carved open, pink-white bone peeking through tattered flesh. Shiro reached in, and broke off two ribs.

The fighter roared, charging, sword pulled back for a swing.

Shiro rolled. Felt the blade skim the air over his head. Stabbed the ribs at the back of the fighter’s knee. The fighter stumbled, fell to hands and knees among armor shrapnel, breathing ragged. Shiro scrambled away.

He hacked at the limiter with the ribs. Tried to fit one between the limiter and his arm to pry it off. The rib snapped. Shiro stabbed at limiter, ragged bone shrieking against metal, carving scars. His weapon hand flickered, metal and black and blood to luminescence, then out. He jabbed the limiter again. It sparked, crackling and fizzing, as his weapon hand came alive.

Boots stirred sand, and Shiro spun, weapon arm coming up to block the Galra fighter’s sword. Tiny reverberations swept up Shiro’s arm into chest, sharp between ribs. Fresh blood wept from the fighter’s shrapnel wounds, staining the Galra’s vindictive smirk crimson and adding a sharpness to his face that age had not.

The fighter stepped away.

Shiro followed, arm pulled back for a knife-hand swing. Agony burst between his ribs. Drove him to his hands and knees. Coughed, fresh blood splattering on sand and face. A kick to the ribs sprawled him over the sand belly up. Blood pooled in his mouth and his lungs with every wheezing breath. The Galra stood over him, sword caked with drying blood in one hand a long thin piece of splintered armor in the other, dripping with fresh blood.

Sneering, the fighter stabbed the length of shrapnel through Shiro’s chest.

The fighter staggered from the pit amidst spectators laughing and cheering, trailing blood through Arena corridors as he headed for the Emperor’s Box. Leaving a bloody handprint on the scanner, the fighter stepped into the box, and knelt smoothly.

“My finest weapon,” Zarkon said, surveying the bloodied pit, “tempered with blood and steel.”

He turned, teething flashing in a triumphant smirk.

“Soon, Keith. Voltron will be ours.”


End file.
